Certain devices and locations have always benefitted from decorative lighting. Amusement park rides, arcades, and performance venues are examples of locations where decorative lighting has long been employed. Some decorative lighting is very simple. Lights may be illuminated or flashed on and off. If a bulb or device fails it may be replaced. However, it is often desired to have more complicated effects that are more visually interesting. It may also be desirable to time lighting to music or other events.
Where a particular segment or portion of a display is intended to be illuminated or operated differently than a neighboring segment, addressing schemes have been utilized. A lighting appliance or group of appliances may be assigned an address. A lighting device may only respond to commands issued on a system bus if the command contains its address. In other configurations, the bus may only deliver commands to a lighting device with a known address. In addition to lengthy and error prone setup times, systems such as these may suffer unacceptable downtime if one or more devices on the bus fails. At the very least, the replacement device must be programmed with the correct address. In some cases, the entire system may have to be readdressed.
What is needed is a system and method that addresses the above and related issues.